Existential
by TheBlackParade
Summary: This is an ode to those we have lost.


Title: Existential

Category, Type: Angst, Lords Of Dogtown

Rating: PG-13 for language and mentions of mature themes.

Summary: This is an ode to those we have lost.

Author's Note: I am challenging myself to manipulate my writing style. I am not accustomed to the patterns of speech used herein. Imagine, if you will, an adult Jay attempting to write a memoir.

Dedications: To the memory of Sid.

Existential

Sometimes I wake up and it feels like I've been dreaming for a long, long time. It's like I've been in a coma for fucking four years or something. Laying in bed as some weird ass reverse fairy tale and waiting for my princess to wander in with magenta lipstick at the ready. When your eyes open you're expecting everything to be the same but it's all changed while you weren't paying attention. Yeah, I sometimes think life's like that.

It doesn't rain much in Dogtown. Too damn hot, you know? If we wanna get drenched we go surfing on the big wet. I like it that way. With the drought and all there isn't a chance of precipitation in summertime. It's July now, a real burn-fuck of a month. Sid would have loved it, this heatwave. He said it made everything quieter when the sun was stifling us pathetic mortal people. But he isn't exactly going to get the chance to enjoy this vacation. I thought maybe I'd prefer it to be raining on the day of my best friend's funeral. It hurt to stand there in sunglasses and a sweat-damp dress shirt thinking that he wasn't going to enjoy the beautiful day.

We always called him 'Baby Sid'. It didn't mean nothing bad when we said it. He was the little one, you know? The baby brother. There was a difference between not fitting in and not being at the top. We all kind of spoiled him even if the big boys did pick on him about his hearing problem. He was the brightest person I've ever known, like some fucking prism with the sun coming through it. Nothing made him mad. Nothing made him cry. Even when he was staring up at me in those final days there was that glitter in his eyes. The kid had a smile like the end of the motherfucking rainbow. He never let on that he was afraid to die at sixteen.

When he first started following Skip like some lost puppy their bonding wasn't pretty. I think Sid was, like, twelve at the time. Some wide-eyed rich boy the size of an eight-year-old didn't seem like he could ever stand on a skateboard. I was fourteen and self-assured as a skinny little punk can be. Nothing got the better of my smartass piehole no matter how big its fists were. Everyone knew that I was Skip's little prodigy. I was the youngest (except for Sid) and the most privileged. If anyone fucked with me they'd have to answer to the Zephyr surfers, and no one in the ghetto would have considered that. I always had a weird habit of taking the rejects under my wing. My best friend Stacy was the same as Sid--- desperate to prove that he wasn't a wimp. They were only as cool as my word.

I have to hand it to Sid--- he knew how to adapt. The affection of a bunch of kite-high rebels was all kinds of abusive. He had this inner ear problem, see, which affected his equilibrium pretty bad. Or so the doctors said in their starchy yuppie way. Loud sound in his ears made him lose his balance and stumble. The guys knew that and they liked to give him shit for it, yelling unexpectedly so that he dropped like a sack of rice. Supposedly it was all out of love. Sid was down with all of it, even when they scared him to death and laughed at his expense. I would have beat the shit out of somebody if they were big enough faggots to treat me like a puppy to be kicked around. But he didn't complain once in the four years I knew him. It was Sid's default to smile like he didn't give a damn.

He was a good kid, really. An imp, yeah, but not an asshole like he easily could have been. Nah, that was Tony. When my Mom was short on cash Sid let me borrow his credit card to feed her. You can call it generosity based on advantage but I know he would have done the same thing if he was poor like the rest of us. Sid was bright-eyed and optimistic but he had some balls on him when it came to sticking up for his friends.

Baby didn't sleep around like most of us did--- he had his eye set on Thunder Monkey since he was thirteen years old. I remember telling him to forget her since she was far out of his league. In retrospect it was a kinda harsh of me to figure that the kid was never gonna get titty. His perseverance paid off two and a half years later when he got old enough to attract female attention. The kid chose well; Thunder Monkey stuck around right up until the day he croaked.

Sid was the one who stayed with me. When the Z Boys scattered to the wind and our personal fame it was him that stuck to the grassroots. I wasn't in it for the fame or the money. Not even for the perfection of my sport. I did it because it made me feel good and so did he. We were the lonesome duo that got paid shit and fucked over by the manufacturers paying my bills. Sometimes Sid was the only reason my Mom and I ate. I joked and called him my agent because he took care of me in a way that I hadn't thought possible. Dudes: for such a tiny thing he stood fucking tall.

Somewhere in our history I decided that Sid was indestructible. He was always there, you know? Always smiling and offering some kind little observation for when you felt low. The possibility that he wouldn't always be at my elbow didn't make sense to me. The day that his Mom told me Sid was dying part of me crumbled like the pier. Swallowed up like ashes carried out to sea. I would have been less surprised if it was Stacy or Kathy or Skip. I mean, what kind of god kills sweet babies like him? Powdered old ladies with tits down to their knees talked about shit like that, about babies and mercy and the apocalypse. All the fucking whores in the bible got the pussy zapped outta them. Guess I shoulda known after I found out about those martyred saints.

I was the last person to see him before they took him to Los Angeles for the operation. He looked like death warmed over under the thin sheets of his hospital bed. I kept expecting him to just wake up, like the coma was a nap he was taking time to finish. I touched his temple with my filthy careless fingers and tried to feel the tumor pulsing beneath the skin. All I could find was cold flesh.

I spent hours trying not to cry on the day the Dogbowl Sessions began. That day is permanently ingrained in my memory as one of the best. Sid was home and looking like Frankenstein's monster with the huge stapled scar from eyebrow to ear. He should have been acting like a sickly victim of brain cancer but the smile was back full force. We all came through on that day. I was so jaded that I had given up hope of Tony and Stacy peeling off the wall of their careers to be there but in the end they weren't rich snobs. No, they prized Sid more than their millions. He had that power to bind us together. Even in the last month of his life Sid was healing us instead of himself.

It was really amazing that it took all three of us to push his wheelchair around the empty pool. Almost, you know, metaphoric or whatever the fuck they call it. The unwieldy chair wasn't as good as skateboarding but it was all we could do to tell him how much we loved him. He trusted us not to crash his fragile body against the rough blue walls. I think that at that moment we truly believed that he was going to be okay. As if the force of our wills would save his life. Maybe it did for the next four weeks.

We weren't expecting the phone call on a mellow Monday morning. I guess it's one of those lessons you learn the hard way. Took only two words, so fuckin' cliché yet so powerful. 'He's gone', she said. He's gone. My fingers numbly released to phone and let it crash to the floor. I vomited over the balcony and tried to cry, really I did, but I couldn't. I clawed at my temples like there was some monster trying to butt its way out of them. The stomach acid stung like the corners of my eyes and I hit the rail with my fist once, twice, three times in frustration. But my training was too good and I didn't shed a tear.

I dazed my way through the next few days like a kid with a massive concussion. My head was dashed on rocks and the sound of the surf was a constant roar I couldn't get out of my head. Guys are kind of like baseball bats sometimes. They're long and hard and tend to smack into things because they don't know how else to touch. Our limbs were like wood colliding and groping for each other. We flailed and made helpless noises and looked at the girls with pleading eyes. Teach us how, help us. I thought about how I used to press Sid against me and managed to fit my arms around Stacy the right way.

Baby didn't look right even after they dressed him up. Lying in repose all rosied up and decked in a monkey suit. He looked like some kind of joke, a cruel satire of what he used to be. They'd even put a wig on to hide the bald cancer-patient scalp. Sid always hated nice clothes; said they felt like paper doll outfits. Neither did he sleep like that, on his back with hands folded protectively over his belly. I'd seen him snore and drool sprawled in a rough 'K' shape on more nights than I could count and I wanted to shake the minister or mortician or whoever'd made him look like some anal pansy. They're not going to remember you, are they? Had half the people here ever seen your glitzy eyes open?

I still have fucked up dreams like swells that toss me up and over. We've got a love-hate relationship, my sleeping mind and I. Never can tell how I'll wake up; sometimes my pillow is damp and others I'm riding on high like marijuana. Although our relationships have been a bad day at the beach for a while I don't know anyone who can produce the range of emotions that memories of Sid call up. Maybe I'll never know if it's because he died or because he was just precious like that. Unforgettable? Absolutely. Worthy of being mourned? Yeah, that too. If my life is in the water and the years like the waves I oughtta be on the downslope about now. Still, no matter the pattern he's always going to be there: sometimes blinding and others just a warmth that encloses me. Sid's never been a wave or a board; he's always been the sun.


End file.
